Computer systems often are used to manage and process business data. To do so, a business enterprise may use various application programs running on one or more computer systems. Application programs may be used to process business transactions, such as taking and fulfilling customer orders and providing supply chain and inventory management.
One type of application program is a customer relationship management (CRM) system that is designed to track relationships between a business and its customers. In some CRM systems, a user may identify the products that may be sold by or purchased by a business entity, such as a customer or a sales organization (either or both of which may be referred to as a business partner). The identification of particular products that may be sold by or purchased by particular business partners may be referred to as a partner-product range, a partner-product indication, or a partner-product association. The identification of a particular product that may be sold by or purchased by a particular business partner may be referred to as a partner-product combination. In some CRM systems, products may be organized into categories and/or a hierarchy, as may business partners. This may make identifying a partner-product range that applies to many products and many business partners more efficient. This may be particularly true when products associated with a particular partner-product range are identified based on a product category or a node in a product hierarchy with which many products are associated, or when business partners associated with a partner-product range are identified based on a business partner category or a node in a hierarchy of business partners with which many business partners are associated. This may help to minimize, perhaps substantially minimize, the human effort required to create and revise partner-product ranges. This, however, may be difficult to later identify a different product-partner range that applies to a partner-product combination or a business partner covered by the previously identified partner-product range without modifying the previously identified partner-product range or entering additional partner-product ranges, often many additional partner-product ranges.
For example, in a consumer products sales context, many different products may be sold by many sales outlets that are commonly owned or operated. In some cases, many, but not all, of the same products are sold by each sales outlet. In addition, even when all of the sales outlets sell the same products, some products may be sold at only a particular time of year (such as seasonal products) or sold at a special price for a particular period of time. When some of the sales outlets sell different products, temporarily offer a special product, or temporarily offer a special price, a user of the CRM system may not be able to define a partner-product range that applies to many products and many business partners. Instead, because the user of the CRM system is no longer able to take advantage of defining a partner-product range high in a business partner hierarchy or another manner of defining a partner-product range that applies to many business partners and/or many products, the user of the CRM system may need to manually define many partner-product ranges to reflect the different products or prices at some of the sales outlets and also define many partner-product ranges to reflect the original products and prices sold at other sales outlets. In the case of many consumer product contexts, including grocery store chains, there many be hundreds or even thousands of products sold at sales outlets. Defining partner-product ranges in such a case may require significant human effort.